The Garden of Eden (original title Eden no sono) is a very special film because it’s an Italian-Japanese production made by the great director Yasuzô Masumura. The Japanese director, who studied filmmaking in Rome as a young man, makes a film with an entirely Italian cast. This is a rather rare film.
Leonora Fani plays Alessandra, the daughter of a bourgeois couple and an art student. The girl falls in love with a guy from a lower social class, who takes her to an unfrequented and unfamiliar seaside area. The guy fakes a motorcycle breakdown and the two stay on this beach for a few days, experiencing an unlikely love story.
After fifty-two minutes, the two guys are lying on the beach. Finally Leonora Fani takes off her clothes and has sex with her partner in adventure. We admire Leonora Fani naked after eight minutes, when she takes off her yellow dress and delights us with a full-frontal nude, then has sex with her partner. Four minutes later the two guys splash each other with sea water, both naked. A long, very interesting sequence follows: naked Leonora Fani is painting a mural. The guy catches up with her and she paints his naked body, then he paints her, then the two run happily into the meadow and make love. We find the two naked again in front of the mural four minutes later.
